My only issue is that I feel there’s a distinction - or should be - between creative personnel, such as editors and producers, and members of the public. 

I can appreciate and get behind an editor telling John Byrne not to do something, or a producer having input during a movie’s shooting. I can’t quite get behind audiences doing the same after a movie has been made.

I’m the guy known for the worst analogies ever, but I look at it like this: if I’m on a safari tour, it’s my job to sit in the Jeep and let the safari guide do his work. I can compliment him afterwards - or I can retire to the bar and tell everyone that the safari guide sucked, was unengaging, lax, etc. But I’m not sure I should have any input in to how he does his job. As long as he’s doing things legally, safely and well-regulated, I’m not sure I should be involved in how things progress. I either like his tour or I don’t.

I’d be fine with the safari guide’s manager instructing him to change this or that - or giving him advice, mentoring him in his duties, etc. And I wouldn’t call being a safari guide “art” like making a movie or comicbook is. I guess I’m just coming up with another lame analogy about how we sometimes have to let people do what they do - and either like it or dislike it.

(I realise my analogy can’t really extend to certain professions, e.g. if your lawyer is doing a bad job, and really isn’t advocating your case that well, you have a right to sack him or have robust words with him)

In a nutshell, I guess I’d like people to make their art - in collaboration, of course - and change what may be needed/required during the creative process, but not after it is completed, especially with something as subjective as test audiences.

Pick up any novel. Look at the acknowledgements page. Those are almost all readers who read the book during the creative process whose feedback led to other drafts. They aren't producers, or editors. They are readers. Some may be writers as well, but they are audience members. Getting feedback can only improve a creation. You don't have to follow the feedback, but getting the feedback causes a creator to look at their creation from a fresh perspective. Sometimes creators get wrapped up in their own head, fall in love with things in their creation that don't need to be there or make the final product worse but don't get edited by the creator because they can't see it as they are too close to it.

There's an art to storytelling, but the ultimate goal is to tell the story in the most effective way you can for the audience. Reciters of epic poems in Ancient Greece and elsewhere would tailor the recitation to the audience with each telling, altering characters, plot points, or what have you to better resonate with the audience receiving the story. Sometimes the storytellers are too close to the material and cannot see where it is not connecting with audiences until an audience sees it. Whether that audience is an editor, a beta-reader, a producer, a director, a test screening audience, an editor looking at dailies during rushes, a friend or relative you ask to look at what you have created, or what have you, getting feedback only improves the creative process. (However, getting feedback is not the same as doing what the person giving the feedback says, that's a terrible idea, but looking at the material with fresh eyes based on how people have interacted and reacted to it to see what is working and what isn't, that's an integral part of a good creative process. Don't confuse hubris with "artistic integrity" and the idea that an artist's vision is more important than the audience's reaction is a late accretion to western culture that has resulted in a lot of poorly conceiver and poorly received "art" being created for no purpose but to serve the creator's ego. Some exceptional art was created that way too, but that's the thing with something that is exception-it is the exception not the rule. And even the exceptional stuff could have benefitted form some feedback and the creator looking at it from a fresh perspective. No art/creation is ever finished, it simply reaches a point where the creator releases it into the wild to be experienced by audiences, but revising something after getting feedback is not cheating, but it is ultimately up to the creators to determine when to release into the wild. But there are a lot of rough drafts released into the wild before they were really ready to be because creators were too lazy or too arrogant to get feedback or to look at it for outside their own head to see if it needed more revisions to be ready.


-M

Echoing others here: definitely not cheating. Whatever it takes to get to a superior piece of art at the end.

Happens all the time in music. A song can change a lot from the time it's written to when it's recorded and released. Input from fellow musicians, producers, record company executives etc, or the reactions of a live concert audience might all inform the final shape of a song.

Test screening has been happening in Hollywood since the Silent era. The BBC has a decent article about it here -- www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220125-the-iconic-hollywood-films-transformed-by-test-audiences

Most of the changes suggested by test audiences involve changing the ending, improving the pacing of the film, or focusing more on a particular character or character relationship. Sometimes filmmakers are forced to fight the studio over changes, and sometimes the changes cause the film to be a box office hit. There are some famous films that have been completely reworked because of screen testing (Sunset Boulevard, Goodfellas), and other films that have been completely massacred (The Magnificent Ambersons, Bladerunner.) Some filmmakers use test screening to their advantage and some loathe it. I think the mistake you're making is assuming that films are shot from a completed script and that there are few changes made. Most films are finished in the edit. Sometimes footage that was left on the cutting room floor makes it into the final cut after test screening like that big dance number on the freeway in the beginning of La La Land. 

As for why test screening occurs, it's because there are millions of dollars at stake. 

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No, but the original cut should always be preserved and see a video release later, and it irks me that this rarely happens.

I do, when George Lucas is involved.  It's one thing when you give us all of the versions; it's another when you take a big eraser to the original.

That's why I ended up getting a copy of the fan-made Star Wars:  Deleted Magic.  It has the full deleted scenes and some alternate takes, plus things like Dave Prowse's on-set line readings.  I have the dvd release with both the original (well, 1980 cut, with further tweaks) Star Wars edit and the Special Editions; but, the presence of the Episode IV chapter title annoys me, since it wasn't there in 1977.  At least Deleted Magic has it in its original form.

Spielberg can be just as bad, like when they digitally removed shotguns, from government agent hands and replaced them with radios, because they were chasing the kids.  Hey, it was in the movie and it was pretty much what would really happen.  "Oh, there are kids with that alien, possibly dangerous creature.  I better lay down my firearms and only go after the 'dangerous' creature with a field radio!"

The Close Encounters dvd I have is annoying, for the alternate versions.  Unlike the Blade Runner set, you can't pick a version and watch it in its entirety.  You can watch the alternate takes, by themselves and see the additional footage, from the Special Edition, by itself, but not the full Special Edition.  The Blade Runner package was far more satisfying, as you could watch the theatrical cut, The Director's Edition, and the Ultimate Edition, if you chose (and I kept my copy I duped off VHS of the European Cut, which was the version available on hoe video, for years, but not included in the set).

In the case of Escape From New York, aside from the Laserdisc release, all home video versions were the theatrical cut and nothing else.  They put out an anniversary edition that had an interview with John Carpenter, with a couple of seconds of footage from the deleted opening; but that was it.  I was happy when they released the collector's dvd set, with the deleted sequences, as a separate (and restored) feature.  Watching it, I could see why he deleted them, as it got the movie off to a slow start, compared to starting with Air Force One going down over New York, setting it up as a race against time.  The deleted stuff added more to Snake and I had read the novelization, with the expanded material, first and was disappointed when I saw the finished film, without it.